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Whats in a name: ICZN, naming species - controversy

Started by Kai, December 10, 2008, 04:37:52 PM

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Kai

http://catalogue-of-organisms.blogspot.com/2008/12/whats-in-name.html

In lieu of the Purdue species, I thought this was an excellent article because it talks in depth about the problems associated with formal nomenclature, the ICZN,  and the fact that the code and council are very hands off when it comes to upper level taxonomy. This is essentially like scientific anarchy, with the only thing keeping back "taxonomic terrorism" is the peer review process, and sometimes things slip through the cracks (see Olah and Johansen. 2008. Generic review of Hydropsychinae, with description of Schmidopsyche, new genus, 3 new genus clusters, 8 new species groups, 4 new species clades, 12 new species clusters and 62 new species from the Oriental and Afrotropical regions (Trichoptera : Hydropsychidae). Zootaxa 1802.). Theres also the difficulty between evolutionary phylogenetics and phylogenetic systematics (cladistics).

QuoteDefinitions of taxa are a matter of taxonomy, not of nomenclature. Different taxonomic "schools" use different kinds of definitions of taxa. Nowadays, no taxonomic school claims to be "Linnaean", i.e., to use "Linnaean" definitions of taxa. There exist no such things as "ICZN-taxa" (Joyce et al. 2004) because the Code does not provide any guideline for defining taxa, being theory-free regarding taxonomy. In current taxonomy, only two kinds of definitions of taxa are widely used: phenetic definitions or diagnoses; and cladistic or "phylogenetic" definitions, or cladognoses (Dubois 2007a: 43).

Esentially there is this split between people who want to modernize and continue using what used to be Linnaean taxonomy in evolutionary phylogenetics, or they want to scrap that system and go to nameless clades in cladistics. They both have uses, though honestly in the insects we are much closer to the truth than the vertebratologists when we use the modified linnaean system. My adviser said this may just be a consequence of insects being around longer, with more of the pieces in the descent chain preserved, while in vertebrates you are missing a massive piece of that chain, the Dinosauria, which gave rise to mammals and birds.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Kai

http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/2008/f/zt01950p086.pdf To the original article on Phylogeny, taxa and zoological nomenclature

http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/list/2008/zt01950.html The issue of Zootaxa that contains many papers on this topic, most of which are free to the public. In fact, most Zootaxa papers are free to read online. I really almost think I should purchase a subscription though.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Requia ☣

I hate whichever group decided to fuck with the meaning of hominid.   :argh!:

I wouldn't know about insects though.
Inflatable dolls are not recognized flotation devices.

Kai

Quote from: Requiem on December 11, 2008, 08:16:23 PM
I hate whichever group decided to fuck with the meaning of hominid.   :argh!:

I wouldn't know about insects though.

What was the meaning of hominid in the first place? Bipedal apes that are less hairy and were closely related to H. sapiens sapiens? Theres a whole bunch of extinct primates that would belong to that group. I don't know if any of the extant great apes would.

I think thats the whole idea of the article though. There are no good definitions of many higher taxonomic groups, to the point that people can't even tell what sensu stricto or sensu lato would mean for those groups. Insects are a bit better because the taxonomy is more recent, but vertebrates have systematics that so many people are attached to even though they do not reflect phylogenetic relationships.

I talked about this before in another thread. There are a bunch of different opposing sides in biology, there are the natural selection vs genetic drift people, there are the lumpers versus spliters and then there are the phenetecists versus the cladists. Phenetics judges systematics by degrees of separation of characters (so a heron and stork are related in phenetics due to degrees of similarity), while cladistics uses special derived characters (called synapomorhies) to determine evolutionary relationships and common ancestors. The phenetics argument is that we seldom can accurately judge the phylogeny of an organism, so taxonomy should simply be based on degrees of similarity and should ignore evolutionary relationships. On the other hand, modern genetic research allows us to judge phylogeny much better than in the past, and cladistics allows us to make assumptions about organisms that are part of a clade, even if we know little about the organism itself. I personally agree with the use of cladistics in everything except species diagnosis. In diagnosis you are simply telling species apart, and this uses degrees of difference like what phenetics endorses.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Requia ☣

Hominid pretty much just means bipedal ape, outside of the walking upright thing, most of them aren't very close to human, some even less so than chimps, one of the genuses (genii?) was eating leaves or roots, some sort of plant matter that took powerful gorrilla like jaws anyway.

One of the newer taxonomic theories says that hominid can't mean bipedal ape anymore though, since humans are the only bipedal ape, and its not good to have a group higher up the chain than genus with only one non extinct member.  So they decided that hominid really means 'related to humans' and tossed chimps in there.
Inflatable dolls are not recognized flotation devices.

Kai

Quote from: Requiem on December 11, 2008, 09:13:13 PM
Hominid pretty much just means bipedal ape, outside of the walking upright thing, most of them aren't very close to human, some even less so than chimps, one of the genuses (genii?) was eating leaves or roots, some sort of plant matter that took powerful gorrilla like jaws anyway.

One of the newer taxonomic theories says that hominid can't mean bipedal ape anymore though, since humans are the only bipedal ape, and its not good to have a group higher up the chain than genus with only one non extinct member.  So they decided that hominid really means 'related to humans' and tossed chimps in there.

Cool, I actually like that better. So Hominidae includes all the great apes now, and Homininae includes Pan, Gorilla, and Homo species. Makes more sense to me, at least from a evolutionary taxonomic standpoint. Technically, chimps and humans would be a clade, chimps humans and gorrillas would be a clade, chimps humans gorillas and orangutans would be a clade, but thats cladistics sensu stricto. Its much less anthropocentric this way.

Also, genus is singular, genera is plural.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish